User Reviews

Set in a farm, this has a father and a daughter living by themselves. The father exploits and represses the daughter, who toils as a slave and never meets anyone. One day, a young man appears and they become mutually attracted. This simple story has an outdoors act, as they plow the field, in between two indoors acts, inside the hut. In the outdoors sequences, the director creates a sense of loneliness and despair, and then of love and hope; the indoors are used to create an atmosphere of oppression. All this is handled competently in this short film. The problems that I saw in this film are: the excessively caricatured characterization of the father; and not-so-good acting (by all three, I guess; the young woman is actually good at facial expressions but is not so good with her voice).

This short was also known as "Black Dawn" and was made by Josef Bryne and Seymour Stern back in 1933. The film is almost completely silent (with very terse dialog) but has a really nice musical score. The actors are all non-professionals and was made on a rather small budget.

"Dawn to Dawn" is set on a rustic farm. A young woman has been kept on the farm by her domineering father. She hasn't seen life outside the farm and he won't allow her to socialize--saying men are 'no good for you'. It's obvious she's miserable and longs to see the outside world. She's virtually a prisoner and he works her like a dog. Then, a man shows up on her farm and changes everything. But, when her angry father catches her with the man, he has a heart attack and dies...which, I think, is supposed to be a happy ending.

The film is interesting because there is a scene where the man and woman meet and she's topless. While you don't see anything, it is a bit scandalous--as is the implication that they then might have made love (it's really not certain). Then, later in the film, the man sneaks into the lady's bedroom. Although Pre-Code films sometimes DID have sex in them (at least talk about sex or implied sex), this one seemed more sexually-charged than usual. It also has a very sad sort of ending.

The film is quite artistic but it's also very, very slow. I assume most would struggle with it--especially since it's also rather bleak. Well done but not altogether pleasant.